Social workers' role in environmental preservation and development

In the previous post we learned about Major environmental movements around the world

This post provides an introduction to various environmental movements in both industrialised and developing nations.

Introduction
Unequal Impact of Environmental Degradation
Social Work and Environment Protection
Role of Social Worker in Environment Protection and Sustainable Development
Awareness Building
Policy managers and consultants to government for enabling people-centric and environment-friendly policies and models
Green Social Work
Conclusion

Introduction

There is a growing knowledge and appreciation of the effects that environmental issues, from pollution to anthropogenic climate change, have on human well-being as awareness of the nature and scope of the global environmental crisis grows. With the deterioration and loss of our natural environment, humanity may be facing a very tough period. The ongoing crisis brought on by environmental deterioration, climate change, and resource depletion, which provide the basis of subsistence for a significant portion of the global population, has posed a significant threat to the existence and welfare of the human race.

Social workers are ardent proponents of change and all facets of social justice, including considerations for the setting in which communities and groups operate. In a society where social justice is practised, a healthy environment is today seen as a human right that is specifically connected to human dignity and anti-discrimination (Wronka, 2008). An rising amount of empirical research across disciplines has shown the profound and nuanced consequences of environmental and human welfare. The global consciousness of all humans has a direct impact on the health and survival of humans in the future.

In all of this, where does social work fit? In the past, social work has been committed to enhancing and preserving human welfare (Berger & Kelly, 1993). Building on its historical foundations, social work must embrace its position as a natural proponent of environmental sustainability and preservation. A new ethic that is consistent with our growing awareness of our interconnectedness with the natural world and our comprehension of the limits of nature's resilience in the face of growing human exploitation is one that social workers must integrate and consolidate. As a result, social work's strength as a helpful profession frames itself as a natural link to environmental protection, ecological preservation, and humanity. If social work is to remain an important profession in the face of rising environmental issues, then this accomplishment is necessary.

Unequal Impact of Environmental Degradation

As people become more aware of their obligation to address this issue, their interest in updated information about the relationship between humans and the environment grows. It is crucial to expand these ties to nature. Human behaviour can have an impact on the problems that populations experience, including those related to global warming, health problems, increased vulnerabilty to disasters, and unparalleled eviction of indigenous peoples from their natural habitats.

Although every person on earth is affected by environmental deterioration, each person's involvement in the issue and reactions to it are unique. Most frequently, the poor are held responsible for the destruction of the environment under the pretext that "poverty is the worst polluter." The reality, however, is quite the opposite because wealthy countries and wealthy individuals within developing countries are the ones who contribute to the environment's rapid decline because of their high and continually rising consumption levels and propensity to produce enormous amounts of waste.

People are particularly affected by environmental change during catastrophes like floods, heat waves, landslides, and earthquakes. This highlights how poverty disproportionately magnifies the negative consequences of environmental injustice on people.

It is becoming increasingly clear in the modern setting that while the wealthy and privileged portions of society benefit from environmental exploitation, the marginalised sections suffer the most negative effects. In other words, both within countries and globally, the most vulnerable, underprivileged, and disadvantaged people, organisations, communities, and cultures bear a disproportionate burden of the harmful effects of environmental challenges.

This prompts us to assert that the environmental crisis is likewise underpinned by grave concerns about social and environmental justice. Social work has a crucial role to play in addressing environmental concerns and the ongoing global ecological crisis because of its humanistic commitment and social justice mission.

Social Work and Environment Protection

Protection of the environment and social work Social work has constantly tried to create an adjustment for its clients and client groups within their "environment" due to its profession's long-standing focus on "person-in-environment". The "social" milieu, however, was long considered to be the appropriate context and setting for social workers. The relationship a person has with other people, groups, communities, and organisations is referred to as their "social" environment. Therefore, in the past, the ecological or person-in-development models in social work primarily neglected the interaction between people and the "natural" environment (Coates, 2003).

Numerous academics have called for the ecological model of social work to be expanded to include "a complete awareness of human's position in the biological as well as social ecosystems," including Germain (1979), Weick (1981), and Berger (1995). (Berger and Kelly, 1993, p. 524). The National Association of Social Workers Journal of Social Work made a strong case between 1992 and 1995 for social work's inclusion of the physical and ecological environment in its purview. The National Association of Social Workers (2000) emphasised in its policy statement the importance of social work's role in promoting both human and environmental preservation (NASW, 2000).

The editors of the influential book Environmental Social Work, Grey, Coates, and Hetherington (2013), have acknowledged the need for a paradigm shift within the field of social work in order for social workers to become more ecologically aware, break free from their respective disciplinary silos, and work to better understand and address environmental destruction and climate change. Dominelli (2012), who has emerged as the proponent of Green Social Work and attempts to persuasively explain the case for modern social work to interact with environmental challenges, is the most recent and possibly the most significant of the environmental social work experts.

Dominelli (2012) contends that "green social work focuses on how responses to environmental crisis must both challenge and address poverty, structural inequalities, socio-economic disparities, industrialization processes, consumption patterns, and....limited resources" in light of the connections between "environment" and "social" (p.3). To understand why environmental impacts are disproportionately carried by the most marginalised communities, individuals, and societies worldwide, it is necessary to comprehend the greater structural power dynamics in society.

Social workers have the rare ability to view environmental challenges through the eyes of the poor and disenfranchised because they naturally recognise power and privilege, deprivation, and oppression. What could be more important than the catastrophe facing the earth and all of its inhabitants to survive? Social professionals also have a natural desire to address the most pressing issues facing people. This illustrates how crucial it is for the social work profession to take the lead in addressing environmental issues and reversing their negative effects, especially on the most vulnerable groups who are often the first and hardest affected by environmental disasters.

Social justice is the central ideal of social work. In order to realise the human rights outlined in both the international definition of social work and the ethical rules for professional practise, it seeks to eliminate structural inequities ranging from poverty to stigmatisation of people. According to a new perspective for the profession, social justice includes tackling concerns of environmental justice and caring for the environment.

The issue has come up in a number of social work forums. For instance, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Delegate Assembly stated in 1999 that environmental exploitation directly contravenes the NASW Code of Ethics and breaches the ideal of social justice. As a result, a new environmental social work policy statement was released. Furthermore, the 56th CSWE annual programme meeting's theme of "Promoting Sustainability in Social Work" was a declaration by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) that sustainability is the social justice issue of the twenty-first century. Social work, a profession that is positioned at the core and centre of social justice concerns, has finally begun to pay attention to the global issue of sustainability.

According to Green Social Work, the social work field needs to transition to an ecological perspective where the rights of all components of the human and non-human environment have equal weight. Concerns for social and environmental justice in social work call for redefining the connections between people and the environment. Reevaluating indigenous wisdom, which places a high value on the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, is one way to achieve this.

The daily interactions of indigenous communities and women with the forest, in which they appreciate and protect it, demonstrate this harmonious relationship of care. Chipko, Beej Bachao Andolan, Appiko, and Kenya Greenbelt Movement are just a few examples of movements that have expressed the sensitivity of care and nourishment for the environment of the local people. Social work has a growing responsibility to reestablish the deteriorating connections between individuals and their surroundings and to raise the necessary awareness. The ecological approach promotes the necessity for social engagement with environmental challenges in order to alter and reimagine the social work profession through an ecological lens.

Role of Social Worker in Environment Protection and Sustainable Development

Gross structural inequalities have been created as a result of the dominant development paradigm, unequal power dynamics, unequal resource distribution, and a neo-liberalized global economic system, which disproportionately affects the poor and those with low incomes. Such an economic-social system has damaged people's ability to manage risk and prevented low-income individuals and their communities from building resilience. An evident result of this neoliberal, market-driven environment is environmental injustice, which is the inequitable distribution of the planet's resources and which is founded in environmental deterioration brought on by unsustainable patterns of development.

Social workers have a responsibility to work toward achieving "Environmental Justice" for all, particularly for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. Environment justice refers to the equitable distribution of the advantages and costs associated with preserving a safe and sustainable environment that all living things can benefit from. Social workers who work in environmental justice must address both systemic and personal forms of injustice that negatively affect individuals and harm the environment while granting privileges to a select few. As an illustration, the current unequal distribution of income in the world has resulted in 1,153 billionaires, while three billion people survive on less than two dollars each day (Kroll and Fass, 2011).

The idea of sustainable development has made it possible for us to understand the crucial connection between current conduct and probable future outcomes. Sustainable development is defined as any development that satisfies current demands without jeopardising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs. Social workers play a special role in developing alternative models of socioeconomic and environmental development that are grounded in the principles of environmental justice and a healthy, sustainable existence. Although everyone has a part to play in maintaining the earth's environment for the use of the current and future generations of people, as well as the flora and fauna, social workers have a particular role.

Awareness Building

In light of the aforementioned, there is an urgent need to increase awareness of the larger socio-economic mechanisms present in society that contribute to environmental degradation while also placing the blame for this on the underprivileged. Social workers raise public awareness of and knowledge of the unfair socioeconomic practises that contribute to environmental injustice and deterioration at the same time. They can encourage people to move toward an empowering and ecologically just form of development by clearly outlining the unfair and unsustainable patterns of growth.

Social workers play a critical role in raising public awareness of the hazards posed by environmental degradation and in empowering communities to take action to reduce the potential for harm.

Policy managers and consultants to government for enabling people-centric and environment-friendly policies and models

Social workers must encourage and support people's engagement at all stages of decision-making, planning, execution, monitoring, and evaluation in order to ensure that the development paradigm is sustainable, just, and inclusive. They must create and encourage multi-stakeholder partnerships that include the populace, professionals, and the government for the same reasons.

Additionally essential to ensuring that sustainable development principles are implemented in development programmes are social workers. However, a lot of development initiatives do not adhere to sustainable practises. It is not unusual to see that environmental impact assessments, which are a required step in project development, are often skipped in favour of fast environmental clearances for environmentally risky projects. Governments and communities have failed to hold massive multinational corporations (MNCs) responsible since the development paradigm has backed them.

Therefore, the development initiatives founded purely on maximising profits have resulted in widespread eviction, loss of livelihood, human suffering, environmental damage, and grave environmental injustice. The most severely affected groups are marginalised populations whose only means of subsistence are natural resources. These include graziers, fishermen, tribal and forest dwellers, small and marginal farmers, grazing communities, and, most significantly as a constituency that cuts across all of these communities, the women from all of these communities.

Given their gender-specific tasks, women are required to interact with nature in order to provide for their families' basic needs. Women suffer the most from the declining environmental resource base due to growing labour demands and deteriorating health.

Due to irresponsible mining, deforestation, and river damming, indigenous populations are also the most severely impacted. As a result of losing their rights to their natural resources, people are forced to migrate and flee the environment. In order to prevent the communities from becoming ecological refugees—a result of the prevalent paradigms of development—social workers must raise awareness and mobilise them to fight this change. They help communities get organised and equip them with the tools they need to oppose exploitative paradigms and relationships. Given the likelihood that disputes involving natural resources will rise, social workers should be prepared to take on a variety of responsibilities, including mobilizers, educators, organisers, negotiators, advocates, and conflict managers. Social workers have more opportunity to construct multi-stakeholder partnerships to settle disputes as well as to create and strengthen networks and coalitions to present a powerful voice to request alternative development.

Green Social Work

As a perspective, green social work enables social work to play a vital role in the protection and promotion of the environment as well as in the pursuit of the illusive sustainable development. Green social work is comprised of

‘…a form of holistic professional social work practice that focuses on the interdependencies amongst people; the social organisation of relationships between people and the flora and fauna in their physical habitats; and the interactions between socio-economic and physical environmental crises and interpersonal behaviours that undermine the well-being of human beings and planet earth. It proposes to address these issues by arguing for a profound transformation in how people conceptualise the social basis of their society, their relationships with each other, living things and the inanimate world’ (Dominelli, 2012, p. 25)͘ .

A profession known as "green social work" has its roots in improving both the wellness of individuals and the environment. The foundation of green social workers' interventions is the notion that nation-states, which are United Nations members, are already committed to environmental justice. Each state is required to provide every citizen the right to a healthy and sustainable environment as a crucial component of environmental justice under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Social workers support environmental justice by assisting individuals in organising and mobilising efforts to save their physical and natural environments. As a result, they seek to uphold social justice and human rights in order to improve both the present and long-term welfare of people and the environment.

It is significant to underline that social workers must have a political attitude that acknowledges the power dynamics that invariably determine how individuals have access to resources and share the costs associated with environmental degradation. But in order to empower people, their involvement should be comprehensive and focused on addressing environmental injustice, environmental degradation, and systemic forms of oppression. As a result, the real justification for social work's involvement in the environment is to uphold social justice and human rights in order to improve both human and global wellness.

Social workers should be concerned about the following issues:

Human rights violations
Environment degradation and decimation 3
An economic system that perpetuates inequalities and lacks sustainability
The neglect of cultural diversity and the non-affirmation of indigenous lifestyles

These issues are connected to the fights for sustainability and environmental justice. The social worker must take the following actions as a result:

Support people in affirming their human, social and environmental rights.
Facilitate local communities to realize their inalienable rights to their natural resources; promote people's participation in protecting and managing their environment; and enhance the well-being of humans and the ecosphere.
Mobilize people to join in meaningful partnerships and alliances to promote environmental protection, environmental prudence, environmental justice and environmental sustainability.
Empower the marginalized individuals, groups and communities to influence commercial/business, industry, governments, multinational corporations and all other institutions to undertake environmentally sustainable and just projects.

Social workers are required to fulfil a variety of responsibilities under these mandates, including those of educators, enablers, facilitators, coordinators, community mobilizers, negotiators, mediators, advocates, and consultants. They are supposed to work not only with the populace but also with the government to push for 'bottom up' and genuinely participatory policies and mechanisms.

Some of the more specific roles that social workers play are mentioned below:

The contribution of indigenous groups and community-based organisations to environmental preservation, conservation, and management should be identified, acknowledged, documented, and highlighted. Data/information on their contribution to environmental conservation, such as protecting and promoting mixed forests, battling forest fires, stopping illegal logging and encroachment, conserving water and working toward equitable sharing, conserving soil, protecting wildlife, and so forth, must be documented in order to accomplish this. For environmentally sustainable and context-specific regeneration, it is imperative to maintain and incorporate the traditional and indigenous knowledge and practises that are quickly vanishing.
Encourage the consideration of gender in environmental management and preservation. Women play a major role in many interactions with nature, so it makes sense to increase their participation in official programmes and environmental action projects. The ecofeminist theory supports women's unique connection to nature and the part they can and should play in environmental management and regeneration.
Create laws and policies to make sure that the rights, interests, and concerns of the communities that rely on the environment the most are protected. For this, policy recommendations should guarantee that conservation issues do not conflict with locals but are aware of and attentive to their requirements.
Boost grassroots community structures and create appropriate institutional frameworks for participation.
Be a part of the movements for environmental rights, environmental protection, and against harmful development, industrial pollution, etc. Prepare people to start and take part in social movements and activism.
Teach people how to use their resources wisely and sustainably, as well as their role and responsibility in preserving the environment. Aspects of becoming green also include protecting the environment at all societal scales and promoting renewable resources that enable a green economy.
People should receive instruction on tactics and strategies for promoting and protecting the environment.
To give people access to resources including funds, supplies, technical inputs, skill learning, and other support, establish links or networks with government agencies, financing organisations, technical/specialized agencies, and other nonprofit groups.
Increasing access to literacy, education, training, health services, credit, technology, and incentives will increase people's engagement.
Document the necessity for and effects of environmental change on the most disadvantaged communities.
Initiate and sustain public participation in the resistance to environmentally unsustainable and unjust practises by mobilising collective action based on the legacy of the Chipko, Appiko, and Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Conclusion

Due to its humanistic commitment and social justice perspective, social work is best positioned to respond to the human implications of environmental change and stress. Environmental justice and environmental protection can be advanced in a variety of ways by social workers. Unfortunately, the field of environmental practise, research, and policy making still lacks an appropriate presence. It is vital for the social work profession to actively assert its legitimate position in the field of environment protection and sustainable development given the urgent need for innovative, successful, and justice-oriented answers to the human components of global environmental crises. Intergenerational equity is a key component of sustainable development, which lays a strong emphasis on “the meeting of needs, as opposed to wants, and places a clear focus on intergenerational equity” (Hembd & Silberstein, 2011, p. 262). Environmental health, economic viability, and social well-being, collectively known as the triple bottom line, may be used to define sustainability both narrowly and widely (Calder & Dautremont-Smith, 2009). Indeed, the advancement of all three is crucial for the profession of social work.